Giggs To Celtic Rumours Heap Disrepute On Internet Writers

The internet is wonderful. The internet is full of excellent writers, extraordinary talent and even a bonus code for Matchbook betting.

It’s also full of trolls, people whose sole purpose is chasing controversy or worse … chasing hits.

As a consequence, some of them will post anything.

I don’t write news stories, or at least I don’t write news stories often. I floated one transfer rumour during the window, and a story this morning about how a newspaper said Celtic had sounded out a managerial candidate for the summer.

But for the most part, I try not to give substance to vapours.

The Ryan Giggs story tonight is not even that.

It’s not even simply made up nonsense which someone calling himself a “freelance journalist” slapped a Breaking News tag on.

Giggs was not at Old Trafford tonight because of a family illness; did someone decide to use that to fabricate a story?

What kind of person does something like that?

That doesn’t meet the standards set by any kind of journalism at all, as far as I’m concerned. It is the very definition of trolling, of trying for retweets, and it blackens the name of real freelance journalists everywhere, people who break actual news.

That this has been picked up by some “websites” is not surprising.

They are all about hits and fishing.

That’s their purpose, and fair enough.

The occasional online bookie picking it up is also to be expected as anything that gets people to their pages is good business.

It’s a different thing, entirely, for Ladbrokes to be “reporting” this utter garbage, as they are actually a Premier League sponsor and this could be seen, if one were being paranoid, as coming perilously close to trying to destabilise a club on the eve of a big game.

I’ve spent all day writing about Celtic and the problems at the club. I’m but a humble internet blogger.

I’m not a major organisation, with links to our league, trying to pass this crap off as actual news.

Our manager is still in a job. The league’s official sponsors have no goddamned right lending credence to nonsense like this, and what’s made worse is that their official PR wing is none other than Level 5, run by our old “friend” Jim Traynor.

Deila is under pressure.

This isn’t pressure.

This is a toxic cloud which no other manager in the league would be expected to endure.

Shocking stuff.